Concerning pay rates for first officer pay at the airlines that GR was talking about earlier:
My first job out of A&P school was working for a US Air regional airline in Jacksonville, Florida in 1988. I started at $7.75 an hour. I made more money than first officers flying Dash 8's.

From GR's post, it sounds like things have changed all that much in the last 23 years.

After that crash of the Dash 8 in New York a few years ago when the FO's and captain's experience was an issue, I remember FO pay was brought up. My wife couldn't believe how little money FO's made.

:)

It's all about cost of living, as mentioned. 7k here is about half of poverty level. That wouldn't even cover a decent apartment for 2 for a year, and I live in a fairly cheap area.

Our minimum wage rates are around $6/hr, maybe a touch higher, haven't checked recently. you're making around the equivalent of 3.50/hr, and that's just at 40 hour weeks. With the amount of hours your working, you're earning even less.

But it's all relative. Maybe where you're from the cost of living is low enough that $1/hr lets you live like a king.

I think it's generally true that European costs of living are, on average, higher than US. They're about same in the large US cities, but otherwise US is noticeably cheaper to live in. Heck, it's noticably cheaper to live in the US than in Canada, even...

Once you take out my academic expenses (which are mandatory to my keeping a job in the first place), I live on roughly $14,000 a year. Actually I live pretty well on that, but that is purely conditional on the fact that I maintain the lifestyle of a transient half-bum with very few possessions except my PCs, books and clothes. If I had a family, I would be thoroughly screwed. Or they would be thoroughly screwed. Not that it'd be pretty after I graduate - given my line of work, even in the best case scenario I will be making around 30,000 until I'm 35. Not great for family prospects in this culture, given the cost of living, either - and that's for someone who will have spent over 12 years in post-secondary education :( Which is why I always break out in laughter when people envy that "professor pay" I'll supposedly be getting with my PhD!

Which is funny, because when I was growing up in Russia, my family lived in total poverty and as a kid I enjoyed the heck out of it - and my parents were okay. My family's income for the first 14 years of my life never exceeded an equivalent of $5,000 with zero savings (and was often well below that, even), even with relatively high cost of living. So maybe a lot of it also does come down to culture and expectation as well...

He already answered what his cost of living is:03:
"More than I can afford so I am forced to live with my mother.
Living cost here is not that far from the US or western Europe, also what kind of an apartment are you talking about here?"

If it indeed is the same as in western Europe, it's at least some 3000-3500 euros a year. I've got an 11m2 room (some 110ft2) with shared kitchen and bathroom, and it costs €275 a month.

Lucky! My room is 9m2, and I pay €340 a month for that here in Canada (and that's still considered a good deal here...) :doh:

An apartment like that would cost about two thirds of my monthly paycheck to rent here, and that is without the cost of water and electricity and garbage disposal included. I can't even afford a one room apartment.
Anyway at the moment I am working as a security guard because there really is no other job available for me at the moment, 2 years of metalworking experience means nothing, the fact that I know computers inside and out means nothing and my skills as a recon infantryman aren't really marketable.

Because my knee went that put an end to my prospective military career, so there went that plan, so basically the spot I am in is my own fault on one hand and faulty anatomy on the other.

But I have not given up so it's back to school with me this fall.